Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T19:24:17.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reason maintenance and belief revision: Foundations versus coherence theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2009

Peter Gärdenfors
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Recent years have seen considerable work on two approaches to belief revision: the so-called foundations and coherence approaches. The foundations approach supposes that a rational agent derives its beliefs from justifications or reasons for these beliefs: in particular, that the agent holds some belief if and only if it possesses a satisfactory reason for that belief. According to the foundations approach, beliefs change as the agent adopts or abandons reasons. The coherence approach, in contrast, maintains that pedigrees do not matter for rational beliefs, but that the agent instead holds some belief just as long as it logically coheres with the agent's other beliefs. More specifically, the coherence approach supposes that revisions conform to minimal change principles and conserve as many beliefs as possible as specific beliefs are added or removed. The artificial intelligence notion of reason maintenance system (Doyle, 1979) (also called “truth maintenance system”) has been viewed as exemplifying the foundations approach, as it explicitly computes sets of beliefs from sets of recorded reasons. The so-called AGM theory of Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson (1985; 1988) exemplifies the coherence approach with its formal postulates characterizing conservative belief revision.

Although philosophical work on the coherence approach influenced at least some of the work on the foundations approach (e.g., (Doyle, 1979) draws inspiration from (Quine, 1953; Quine and Ullian, 1978)), Harman (1986) and Gärdenfors (1990) view the two approaches as antithetical. Gärdenfors has presented perhaps the most direct argument for preferring the coherence approach to the foundations approach.

Type
Chapter
Information
Belief Revision , pp. 29 - 51
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×